Getting into shape and avoiding the apocalypse

We are in the Systems Age of development and facing a number of related critical issues at a range of temporal and physical scales. These now threaten the world’s environment and the human race’s place in it. This paper discusses the array of problems involved and the need to tackle them at the systems level, to identify sustainable solutions and resilience measures to avoid large scale undesirable outcomes. There is a need to avoid the usual conclusion after such events that ‘lessons must be learned’.